picking up objects with virtual hand

[segovia]

I have a hand in my virtual world (controlled via external hardware, a data glove and whatnot) and I am trying to pick up a cube with it. I was hoping to get away with just setting high levels of friction for both the hand and the cube, and picking up the cube would be automatic. It does not work all that well, though. The cube eventually slips and falls (the cube is picked up with the hand over it, the thumb on one of the vertical sides and fingers on the opposite side). I have tried reducing its mass, which helps, but it will still eventually slip away. Also, I do not like having to reduce the weight all that much since the object then becomes too easy to toss around by barely touching it.

Is there a way to accomplish what I want without resorting to callbacks and constraints? Or would that be considered the natural way of handling this?

[Basroil]

You can first try making the simulation run faster framerates (base of 1/1000 rather than 1/60) and try multibody solvers (pivot solvers wouldn't always help, though it might be fine in some cases), but if neither of those works you'll need to have a custom callback based on the maximum forces your articulations can output

[segovia]

Thanks for your reply.

Sorry, I'm still a relative noob to Bullet, could you please explain what multibody solvers are and how to use them? Or just point me to an example (from the demos, maybe)?

Thanks!